Of Lavender and Creed
by Tangle
Summary: Companion piece to 'Of Needles and Shackles'-- the Creed/Clarice dynamic in the movieverse.


Sparkly, Shining

By: Tangle

Disclaimer: All your base are not belong to us.

Summary: Companion piece to 'Fiery, Flaming'--the Creed/Clarice dynamic in the movieverse

Rating: PG-13

__

AN: Reading 'Fiery, Flaming' would be a plus before reading this story, but to give you a run-down of the necessary events-- The X-Men have captured Victor Creed while he was finishing a bar brawl. Clarice tried to grab him just after he fell but, fearing for her own life, was forced to evacuate. Creed's not really dead, she just thinks he is.

~~~

The room was empty. Empty in the sense of being devoid of human life. There was air of course, and dust particles, and a few pieces of trash here and there, and even some furniture. Well, more than some furniture. The floor was hardwood, with a square pale carpet covering most of it. There was a little coffee table in the center, dark wood legs with a glass top but nothing on it. A big black leather armchair sat at one end of the table, a matching sofa adjacent to that. Diagonal from both was a large dark wood cabinet with a television and DVD player behind the closed doors. A few more modern paintings hung from the walls. It was a nicely decorated room to be sure, but was still empty of any life--human or otherwise.

A flicker of pink.

And the room was no longer empty. A girl dropped feet first into the doorway out of thin air, landing softly and then jumping into a dead run. She was barely more than a child, couldn't be older than fifteen, but ran with the speed and training of someone twice her age. Her feet, still silent in their tall green boots, sprung lightly across the floor, pushing her off a split second after landing. She sped across the room and up two flights of stairs, barely pausing to catch her breath before sprinting across the landing and throwing open a door. Slamming it shut behind her, she dove face-first onto the bed and was still.

For several minute she did not move but then her tiny lavender body began to tremble, then violently shake as she was racked with sobs. Tears poured in torrents from her white eyes, leaving trails across the maroon marks on her face. Her breath tore itself from her throat and she sobbed until she could sob no longer and she just lay there shaking. She squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arms around her thin frame, forcing herself to admit it.

Creed was dead.

At least, she figured he was. He looked dead. One minute he had been up and fighting while she watched on through a portal and the next he was lying motionless on the ground and she was being shot at too. The man who had raised her since she was only ten years old, the man who was practically a father to her, was dead, gone, and never coming back. All because she had failed him.

~~~

Flashback- 5 years earlier

~~~

Screaming. Screaming, screaming, people were always screaming. Yelling hoarsely, shrieking shrilly, whatever it was the sounds tore from their throats and echoed in her ears like the death-call of the banshee. Clarice heard their screams and hid, always hiding, always tucked away and out of danger. If she did not see them they could not see her and they could not hurt her like before. Down and away she stayed.

But the screams were coming nearer, yelling words she dared not repeat. Clarice curled her tiny body into a tight ball on the ground, wishing and hoping and praying that the screams did not find her. Now there were other sounds--thumps, loud and clear and always coming closer. Bang, thud, thump, crash down, down, down. Each noise made her flinch until she became no more than a shivering lump of lavender flesh on the dirty ground.

Closer, closer, closer still and then her cover was blown away and she lay, exposed and trembling, in plain sight to all. Her eyes shut tight, her fingers locked, her own voice mingling with the screams of others, her energy pounding in the air like so many beating drums louder and louder. She heard flashes, did not see them but heard them and felt them and heard more screams like shrieks of pain and felt it begin to rain down on her and then suddenly stop. Her throat closed and once more she was silent, silent and shaking as a heavy hand landed down on her shoulder.

Then she screamed once more, twisting and jerking away from the hand but it did not let go. Instead it clamped down harder; she opened her eyes--wide, vacant, solid cream eyes--and screamed again, longer and louder, and watched the pink flashes in the air that came and went and came and went like fireflies in the night. A shouting voice, demanding but not hysterical, gradually reached her ears and as her throat ran out of scream she quieted. Now Clarice lay on the ground, flat on her back, twitching and staring up at the most terrifying sight of her life.

He was utterly huge. He engulfed her vision on all sides and invaded her space and dominated the entire alley just by being there. Scraggly blond hair hung down around his face and when he smiled a demonic smile she could see the gleaming points of fangs. His dark blue eyes glittered in their own private malice and the muscles in his body were bigger than she was. He was wounded in multiple places but was healing fast and as he stood over her his blood dripped down to land on her and add to the puddle she already lay in.

Her eyes went wider than ever as she flipped over onto her hands and knees, finally wrenching out of the big man's grasp. She stared in horror at the blood spreading out beneath her, around her, staining her hands and her arms and her clothes and her hair and her soul and . . . Clarice did a quick inspection of herself. It wasn't hers. She wasn't hurt. She was dirty, she was shaking, but she wasn't hurt. It couldn't all be his either, didn't matter how big he was, no one had enough blood to cover an alley like this.

Then she looked around. Saw the carnage that surrounded her. Limb, finger, head, foot, torso--all severed and cleanly so, all dead and clearly so. She had done this. Somehow, she did not know how, she had done this. It was all her fault. These people were dead because of her, all her, only her, just her, her fault. Clarice felt her breath come in gasps, felt her heart quicken, felt her eyes roll back and did not feel it as she fell face forward onto the ground.

~~~

"Kid, wake up. Wake up. Come on, dammit, before I drop you on your head."

Clarice shuddered a few times as she pulled herself into consciousness, clamping her arms around herself and feeling a thick blanket there. A blanket that stretched from beyond the tips of her toes, under the entire length of her body, and out under her head and the pillow it lay on. Her eyes flew open in utter shock and she tried to twist around to see exactly what was going on but only succeeded in tangling herself up in the blanket to the point where she couldn't move so much as a finger.

A new noise reached her ears. The big man was laughing, a deep-throated chortle that sounded unused but somehow comforting. "Easy there, kid."

She stared at him for several seconds before finding her own voice. "You?"

"Yes, me." The man was starting to lose his sense of humor. "You saved my life and Victor Creed is in no one's debt for long. You're gonna learn how to take care of yourself and then you're back where you started, understood?" She nodded slowly, her face full of both awe and fear, but he suddenly wrinkled his nose and made a face. "Okay, first on the list is keeping clean. Unwashed human reeks." He pointed to a side room she had not noticed. "Bath. Now."

~~~

End Flashback

~~~

It had taken Clarice the better part of four years to get the whole story out of him. It was less than a week after she turned fourteen that he finally did tell her. He had missed her birthday of course--and she had spent the better part of that day crying about it--but when he came home that night she knew something was up. She had awoken in the early early morning to the sound of heavy footstep and, recognizing them all too well, had immediately teleported herself downstairs to greet him. She had landed on his back and proceeded to wrap her arms around his neck, gleefully kissing him on the cheek to welcome him home.

Victor merely sighed, then gently pried her off and sat her down on the couch. Clarice took one good look at him and calmed right down. He never came into the house like this, reeking of beer and old wounds and blood--something was wrong. "Look Blinkie," he started, his voice deadly serious. Whatever he was going to say was obviously something he had to, rather than wanted to. "Remember that first night, when we met?" Of course Clarice remembered it, it was the night she went from street brat to Sabretooth's child protegee. "Remember those me?" Well, pieces of them. "Well . . . " he trailed off. "Christ, guess I owe ya the whole story, don't I?" Now Clarice really knew something was up. Mister Creed always watched his language around her.

"You've saved my life, I've saved yers, we're in this all together so I'm gonna tell it to ya straight. Those guys got as far as they did because I was dead drunk, and you pulled my ass outta there. Those guys had buddies, though, who knew I was involved and tracked me down. Haven't been completely honest with you since--I've been tanglin' with them once, twice a month, trying to keep you out of the picture. Don't know how but they still figured it out that you were in on it and now they're after you too. So." He paused, taking a deep breath. If she wasn't put out with him now, she certainly would be after this last bit. Clarice wasn't a people person, working with just one was a stretch for her. "I've signed us up with a ground and some old dude--calls himself Magneto. He's gonna cover our hides while we keep outta these guys' hair for a while. I know layin' low ain't my style, but it's what I gotta do."

For her, Clarice realized. She and Creed had been partners in crime for going on four years now and they always looked out for each other--now he was just looking out for her again. "But we can fight 'em, Mister Creed," she told him urgently. "In and out, like always. You got me t work with and we--" He cut her off with a glare and she silenced for a few seconds. Then she sighed with all the self-importance of a young teenager. "Yessir, Mister Creed, sir," she grumbled, gaze downcast and voice muttering. "Whatever you say, sir."

Creed shot her another glare. "Cut the sarcasm, kid," he warned with a growl. "Yer fourteen, more mature than that." Never mind that it often supplied his own arsenal of weapons. "But speaking of." He paused, grabbing an open box over from beside the door and pulling out a mangy ball of fur no bigger than his hand. Said ball of fur wriggled a few times, then turned its beady eyes on Clarice and let out a small yip. "Followed me back and figured that cause I wasn't here then and all, well." He handed her the small dog, grinning as her eyes lit up. One of his huge hands ruffled her hair. "Happy birthday, pup."

Clarice hugged the tiny creature to her chest, smiling broadly. "I'll name him on the way," she decided, letting Creed know that she was more okay now with the idea of moving. With a little sigh she looked back up at him, her blank eyes searching his face. "Guess I'd better start packing my stuff, huh?" He nodded and, making a bit of a face, she scrambled back up the stairs. She chose to go by foot instead of by portal so the miniature dog could follow. Creed put a hand over his nose as soon she had left the room--that thing needed a bath before he traveled anywhere with it. He didn't care how "cute" it was, with his hyper-senses he could smell it from a mile away and he was going anywhere with something that reeked that badly.

The move in with Magneto and his crew went far smoother than expected. Clarice and Dakota--why she had picked that name for the dog was way beyond Creed's imagination--settled in very well. He had expected her to be a little skittish, which she was at first, and not take kindly to strangers. After all, they had worked exclusively together for years and major changes were no her thing but Clarice warmed up to the new team very well. Or at least, some. Those with the more physical mutations. Erik she was a little more than wary of, she found him too overbearing. Mystique she liked at first finding her power "cool", until the older woman purposely scared her away. Clarice avoided her after that. Mort, however, treated the girl like a younger sister and the two were immediate friends. 

Clarice was going to work on transportation and rescue missions--nothing else. It was the one thing Creed insisted on. Clarice was like his daughter and no dad would ever let their now-fifteen-year-old go into combat no matter how fast she was or thought she was. Luckily it was something Erik agreed to and Creed was content to sit back and be the brute force while his little girl received the best training with her powers she was ever going to get.

Good thing she got it.

~~~

Flashback- Statue of Liberty

~~~

__

No-good, short little, Canuck, sonofabitch.

Creed fell through the air, rapidly gaining speed, but wasn't worried at all about his impending doom. Nope, not worried in the least bit. He still had one ace up his sleeve the idiot runt would never dream of. He watched the water come closer and closer but didn't even break a sweat. This was something they had practiced time after time after time again. Nothing to it.

Falling towards the water, towards it, towards it, towards . . . away. Now everything was opposite what it should have been and he was falling into the sky, and away from the water. As soon as he slowed to a stop he'd be back on dry land. But no he hit the peak and began to fall once more and the whole process started over again. And again. And again. When Creed began to slow down for the fifth time he was more than a little miffed. He growled, one long, low growl. "Cla-"

"-rice!" And found himself back on dry land. He hit wit a rather ungraceful thumb--landings needed work--but quickly rolled back to his feet. "Clarice," he warned. "Pup, I am not on a trampoline. I am not one our yer ping pong games. I am not-" He stopped in mid-sentence, realizing something was not right. His lively Clarice was more disheartened than he had ever seen. "Pup?' he asked slowly. "What happened?" If those goddamn X-Men had done anything to her, anything, he swore on all he held holy and then some--they would pay.

Clarice slowly forced herself to look up at him, her white eyes filled to the brim with tears. With a muffled wail she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around him as far as they could reach and sobbing full force into his chest. There she stood for several minutes while Creed did his best to comfort her. Finally, through her tears and hiccups, he was able to discern two words. "Mort." "Dead."

That sent him into immediate alert mode. "What? How? Where?"

"He got hit by lightening and he fell but I tried to save him and," she tearfully explained. "He--he--" She stammered, the settled for a pointed finger.

Creed took the initiative and followed it. About a hundred feet away was a ledge and lying hidden behind it was the body of Mortimer Tonybee. When he saw the corpse Creed swore several times, barely trying to keep his voice low. No wonder the kid had freaked--all she had rescued was a deep-fried Toad. The boy looked like he had stuck his fingers, tongue, and several toes into a series of electrical sockets. "Lightening" Clarice had said. That meant the weather bitch--Storm. The white-haired freak was really gonna get it now.

Just beyond the ledge were the night-back waters of the bay. Creed spent a few moments loading Mort's clothes with stones and then threw the body over the side. This gave him a few silence seconds to think, and realize why his pre-landing treatment had been so rough. Clarice had wanted to make sure she wasn't bringing back another dead friend. Sighing and dusting off his hands, Creed returned to where the lavender girl sat. "Come on, pup," he said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Let's go home."

"Home?" she asked hopefully.

"Home."

Managing a smile, she nodded and in a flash of pink they were gone.

~~~

End Flashback

~~~

But she wasn't that girl any more. She wasn't fifteen, terrified and helpless. She was sixteen years old, battle-hardened Clarice Ferguson and she had a job to do. First the X-Men had taken Mort. Now the man she wished she could call father was dead at their hands too--and she was the only one there to avenge him. And damned if she wasn't going to. Clarice allowed herself one, last shudder of fright as she cemented her plans in her mind. The X-Men were going to pay and she knew exactly how. She wasn't going to chicken out this time. It was really going to happen.

__

TBC- later chapters of 'Fiery, Flaming'


End file.
